5 Essential Ingredients of a Customer Escalation Process
No matter how proactive we are there are always cases where we need to put on our firefighter gear and manage accounts that have been escalated. Escalation management can be a stressful task, but having a formal process in place will help you and your company to manage escalations as painlessly and effectively as possible.
While there is no step-by-step escalation procedure that guarantees a successful resolution to every issue, there are essential ingredients to ensure success for your internal process:
Get executive-level buy in
This is table stakes. You need senior staff to be on board with your process so that you can execute accordingly. Without their buy-in, members of your team will be more likely to not follow through and/or skip deadlines. You may even experience a lack of priority for escalations if you are missing leadership support.
Form a solid team
The escalation management team should be comprised of top contributors from cross functional departments. Shy away from team members in entry-level positions; in order to de-escalate as quickly and painlessly as possible you’ll need the right talent supporting your efforts. To manage this process, you will also need an Escalated Accounts Manager, ideally someone from Customer Success. It will be this person’s job to hold everyone accountable for his or her tasks and push remediation forward.
Have a well documented process
There needs to be a clear understanding for all involved on what the procedure is for escalation and remediation management. Additionally, all parties need to understand what their role is and how it supports the process.
Do what you say you’ll do, when you say you’ll do it
Self-explanatory, but important. Don’t make promises to your customers you can’t keep. You have one shot to rebuild trust. Being honest about what your customer can expect from you will increase the likelihood that you will be able to retain this customer.
Document EVERYTHING (and don’t forget about your metrics)
Documenting your escalated accounts will help you not only perfect your process, but it will also make for a great source of training in the future. Documentation and metrics reporting will also aid in teasing out systemic issues that may be causing escalations.
The above ingredients are essential and will help you to run your escalation management process as smoothly as possible. Here are some other things to consider when formalizing your process:
- Keep the process iterative: review, learn, and adapt. Keep what works; toss what doesn’t.
- Get the whole company involved. Let anyone escalate for most any reason. By limiting who can escalate and for what reason, you run the risk of losing customers.
Managing escalated accounts is not the easiest part of a Customer Success Manager’s job. However, if done correctly and efficiently it can be an opportunity to save otherwise churned customers and turn them into advocates.
